Dr. Why: Pop Quiz (Mutants and Masterminds Hero High)

M&M

0. Setup
1. Orientation
2. Pop Quiz
3. Midterm
4. Term Paper
Final

Characters

We have names!

• Alex Hanson is actually Ak'hanezakhar, exiled alien princess.
• Bruiser is actually Matthew Brady.
• Tech-Head we're just calling Tech-Head (though as stated last time, his normal ID is Clark Wayne)

This session

This information is as I remember it. I might be wrong or have jumbled the chronology; corrections accepted.

Prolog

The first session was on a Wednesday in September. The following Monday morning, at Dana's (Geodesic's) home, he is being home-schooled about the French and Indian Wars when the doorbell rings. It's two agents from the Bureau of Extremely Foreign Affairs: a man and a woman in the kind of bland anonymous suits that get issued rather than purchased. Both visitors are brown-skinned, but his is a normal sort of brown colour and hers reminds one of tree-bark. She is also shorter than he is by more than half a meter. They provide identification (Guy Beech and Fay Hunter). He does the talking. They would like to speak to Dana alone. His mother reluctantly leaves the room.

They suspect that Dr. Why is up to something but they don't know what. They can't tell because Dr. Why has forbidden items like Go-Pros in the class (the mechanism is unknown, but active smartphone cameras or Go-Pros burn out while cyborg and suit mechanisms do not). Dr. Why has forbidden the college from recording any of the classes.

If Dana sees anything out of the ordinary, could he please report it? Sufficient important information could lead to a scholarship at the Canadian university of Dana's choice.

They hand Dana a thick lovely ornate card.

Once they leave, Dana aka Geodesic of course examines it and finds the electronic device inside it. He assumes it is a tracking device and isolates it after memorizing the contact information in case it is someday useful.

The next day, Clark Wayne (Tech-Head) finds the same BEFA agents when he comes home from school. The visit is not quite the same. Possibly being in the vicinity of the power source affects Agent Hunter because she's twitchy in this visit and cannot contain herself toward the end.

Same offer and they're getting ready to leave when she blurts out, “It has a name!” The name, it turns out, is Pandora, and she is on the team because she's a magic sniffer. She can find unshielded magic items. Agent Beech gets her out of there quickly after that.

Clark does some research and there are several things that Pandora might be, but the one that ties most directly to magic is a green energy source that was released in redacted form and then re-classified about twelve hours later. Apparently it opens a gate to another universe and takes the energy from there. Also, the inhabitants are not happy.

Several weeks later, it is time for class.

One guy on the construction crew says that though there is usually a poker game on Wednesday nights (Matthew Brady often goes but it conflicts with this course, so he hasn’t lately) says there is no poker night tonight. “I got a family thing.” The guy sighs: since his mom died a decade ago, dad has not been himself.

Alex has moved in with Attractive Woman Who Was Just There For The Talk At The Beginning—Priya Nayyar—who is somewhat concerned about Alex bringing home a couple for social unification last night. Since “social unification” is indistinguishable from “sexual intercourse” for Alex, Priya is confused and hurt.

“I thought we had a relationship!”

“We do.”

“I let you stay here even though my mother—”

“Your mother must be a lovely person because you are a lovely person.”

Let's just say that Alex is late to the class.

Log

The first half of the class is uneventful. They have dispensed with the Hannibal Lecter mask and the number of security guards is reduced but still non-zero. Officer Kit Lawson is there operating the slides. (Cut-above security guard was there the next week but not this week.)

At break, Alex and Matthew and about half the class head out to get coffee (the school has cooking and restaurant classes, so there is a restaurant and a student-run coffee-bar on campus). It's a slight hike because the classroom is on the second (top) floor of one of the non-auditorium buildings.

Tech-Head has his force field up (because that's what one should do within a hundred meters of Dr. Why) and asks about Pandora.

Dr. Why blandly replies that he knows about the legendary Pandora, who opened the box of troubles.

Geodesic asks if Dr. Why is magical. Dr. Why's response is that he can certainly use magical artifacts, which he sometimes has access to because he knows magical people.

The lights flicker. When they come back to full strength, there are two men standing there wearing costumes. The older one of them announces that Dr. Why will now suffer for what was done to him.

(Tech-Head's response is, “Tell us some backstory.” Answer: A decade ago, Dr. Why's actions killed this man's wife. So Dr. Why is going to pay, and people here are going to die.)

Tech-Head: “And that's where you lost my sympathy. Threatening to kill people who don't have a connection to Dr. Why.”

The older villain says, “Present?”

The younger one is apparently a speedster, and he punches Tech-Head into the next round.

When the rest get back from their break, the guy in the bunny costume (who calls himself "Narcolepus, hopping through your dreams") tries to open the door. He cannot.

Bruiser tries and rips the doorknob off. Alex pokes at the knob on the other side and it falls out of the hole but then thumps softly as it hits the door, being held in place.

The non-PC students wonder what to do. Is it a test? Maybe they should call the police or something?

Bruiser then punches the door. It splinters and then re-forms. It's not intact, it's still shattered, but the pieces have moved back in place like the wall is held in jelly. Bruiser theorizes that someone could jump in before it re-forms, but no one bothered to do that. Bruiser is annoyed.

Alex high-tails it outside to a spot where she can't be seen and flies to the roof, where she puts on a mask and changes clothes to the outfit she thinks will be her superhero outfit. There is a skylight to the classroom.

Inside:

The student who can turn into a big shaggy yeti (or a raven) clutches her head and falls over, unconscious.

Outside:

Bruiser punches the door and then jumps in before it can re-form.

Alex shoots the skylight and attempts to fly in, but fails. (Alex's player rolled several ones during the evening; I believe this was one of them.) She succeeded on her next turn.

Inside:

Then Present, the older man, waves his arms, pointing at each person, and they have to make Will saves. To the people who fail the roll, they are alone in the room.

Geodesic and Bruiser fail their Will saves.

This is taking much longer to recount than I thought. On the plus side, that means my memory is not as bad as I thought; on the minus side, this is tedious, both for you and me. In point form, and less concerned with maintaining a strict account that lists everything:

• Tech-Head can't connect with either of them, but having spied the cool spot in the shape of a woman floating near one corner, decides to concentrate on that. Highlights include throwing some hummus against the wall.
• Narcolepus helpfully shouts through the door handle hole that there's a ghost. He'll try to engage in mental combat.
• Geodesic can't see anyone but can keep up the mental link with Tech-Head he had conveniently set up before the appearance of Past, Present, and Future. With Tech-Head's guidance, he puts Present in a force bubble and squeezes.
• Future and Present demonstrate the castling effect, and then Future vibrates free.
• Bruiser decides to hit the floor and see if he can spot anyone else in the next classroom. This shatters the floor, which then re-forms. Remember that for later.
• Alex enters.
• The ghost that is Past enters Geodesic's body to try to possess him. He is delighted because then his telekinesis that works against spirits is really likely to hit.
• Tech-Head scores a nice shot against Present and suddenly everyone can see everyone else.
• Geodesic moves the ghost sixteen miles away, punching through the create...and the room falls apart. People fell into the classroom below, students were knocked unconscious, Future quit and Present took away his powers...
• At some point, Bruiser became aware of who Future actually was. So far as I recall, he didn't share this knowledge.
• Once Present was knocked out (no defenses, remember), the ghost vanished.

(I have new appreciation for James.)

Epilog

Tech-Head strips Present of nearly everything and finds on him a small gold coin, with a woman's face on one side and what looks like the snake of Asculepius on the other, except the snake is coiled around a torch, not a staff. (I said a sheaf of wheat in the actual session, but apparently Eris is usually depicted with a torch in one hand and a hissing adder in the other, so I take the opportunity to correct myself.) As he looks at it, the woman's face winks at him.

He gives the coin to Geodesic.

As Geodesic looks at it, he clearly hears the woman saying, “What power do you desire?”

NPCs: The rest of the class

Because we might need to know names, here are the other students in the class.

• Not Costumed:
  • Megan Bay (claims that she wants to work with some kind of hero support...maybe emergency services, maybe counselling)
  • Thomas Gelman (quiet, keeps to himself)
  • Sheila Norton
  • Nichole Rodrigues (shapeshifter; vehemently denies this is her real appearance)
  • Douglas Rodgers
  • Chelsea Wolfe
• Costumed:
  • Blue Screen [Vanessa Roberts] light controller but only blue-indigo-violet light.
  • Ms.-mer [Sherry Mack] Presumably some kind of hypnosis or mind-control.
  • No superhero name but goes by Wookiebird [Leah Hopkins]. Changes into either a yeti or a raven.
  • Plus [April Parsons]
  • No superhero name but goes by Gary or Snailien [Virgil Holt] Totem of the snail
  • Narcolepus [Brandon Wright] has some kind of mental powers and can leap.

Past, Present, Future

Because we know Future's actual name (Derek Vandervecken) research shows that his father's name is Gierd Vandervecken and his late mother was Margaret Vandervecken.

Any two of them could swap places: they could castle. (In fact, all three of them could do it but they weren't going to reveal Past until necessary. It was a small accurate Teleport (rank 5, I think) with a medium that limited it to any of the other two.

Future

Future was the speedster archetype from the book with the addition of castling and the shunt or procrastination power: Affliction, does only second degree damage if he gets a second degree result, makes target unaware for the rest of the round, ends automatically, moves target one round into the future. It is an interesting idea but wasn't a fun power to use, so I used it once on a PC and any other time on an NPC.

Arguably this should have been from a level 3 Affliction result.

Present

Present had a rank 10 attack which had this effect: the person affected could not sense anyone else. The person was still there (and could still communicate mentally) but couldn't sense anyone else. I bought it as Illusion, but it occurs to me you might be able to do it as an Affliction. Either way, making sure all the sense are covered is expensive. This had the flaw Concentration, so later when his bell got rung, everyone found themselves back in reality.

Because I gave him no defenses other than his actual toughness (from Stamina 5) and one point of Defensive Roll, I made him hard to hit. I think that was the wrong decision (though thematically justifiable); he should probably have had higher defenses but been easier to hit.

Because the fatherhood, Present, had the coin, he could decide who had powers and who didn't...the coin was essentially a MacGuffin to empower everyone.

Past

Largely things added to the Silver Scream write up. She had poltergeist-like abilities (Move Object) but they didn't come up, per se. She was holding the room together, which I modelled as Create to model telekinesis holding together the classroom, with the limitation that there actually has to be something to hold together, and the flaw Concentration.

Though she had invisibility to all parts of the spectrum, I fudged it and made her visible by IR because she created a cold spot where she was.

Bureau of Extremely Foreign Affairs

In Canada, the Bureau is a subset of the state department, known by various names over its history but "Ministry of Foreign Affairs" is sufficient. It deals with trade and diplomacy with political entities outside Canada. (Other ministries might or might not have departments that deal with parahumans, depending on their remit. The Department of Defense certainly does, and so does labour.)

In this case, they are concerned because while super-science doesn't necessarily fall into their area, magic definitely does. Because magic often involves pantheons of god-like beings with whom we have trade in some fashion. Ever get a boon from a fairy godmother? How is that taxed? Ever moved to an alternate dimension? Will that have diplomatic consequences?

So the agents and bureaucrats of the BEFA tend to be blase about their work and perhaps have an inflated sense of its importance...because unchecked access to alternate civilizations, timelines (the BEFA covers all times before 1867), and technologies. They also occasionally have access to resources that are unusual, like magic sniffer Kay Hunter.

Guy Beech is an attractive man of colour in his mid-thirties, probably raised in Montreal. He's almost six feet tall. His stats are pretty much out of the book, and he's PL 4.

Fay Hunter is an average-looking woman who is also of colour, but the colour seems a bit off. Brown, yes, but it doesn't look like a normal human skin tone. She normally lets Agent Beech do the talking. From her confession and her attitude, we presume that she can find magic sources, or at least those of a particular set, and the presence of at least one of those magic sources agitates her. (She didn't seem agitated at Geodesic's home.) Her ability to detect magic probably gets her leeway in the regimented world of agents.